We’re in Houston for the Texas Contemporary Fair and are taking a few extra days to explore Houston’s offerings. The Rothko Chapel and The Menil Collection have always been high on our list.

Inside The Rothko Chapel photo: archdaily.com

Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” in a reflecting pool outside of the Rothko Chapel

Michael Heizer at The Menil Collection photo: archdaily.com

Dan Flavin at The Menil Collection

The current exhibit, Luc Tuymans: Nice is an intriguing look at the portraits of renown artist Luc Tuymans together with 25 works from the Menil Collection ranging from 120BCE to 1968. Acting as his own curator, Tuymans selected portraits, masks, carved heads, funerary images, devotional figures and abstract paintings …..”Placed in dialogue with one another, the works illustrate both the incisive vision of one of today’s most important painters as well as the manifold significances of the human face form.” – The Menil Collection

Sicardi gallery presents and exhibit of new and historic work by Miguel Angel Rios. Since the 1970s, Rios has made work about the concept of the “Latin American,” using this idea as both an artistic strategy and a political problem. In the 1990s, he began making a series of maps which he carefully folded and pleated. Marking the 500th anniversary of the “discovery” of the Americas, the maps indicate long histories of power and colonial experience.